May 31

Monday May 31, 1982

It was the Spring Bank Holiday half a world away, in England. Down here, the war went on.

The Royal Marines Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre took out an Argentine Special Forces lying-up position near Top Malo House. There was a brisk and vicious firefight, and three of the marines were injured in achieving total success against their opponents. I recognised two of them immediately, 'Touche' Groves and Taff Doyle, who were both colleagues from ski-ing and rugby days. Touche's 'magic lantern show' was a Sod's Opera highlight whenever he performed it, but now he was fighting for breath with a nasty gunshot wound of the chest. Taff Doyle came round from his anaesthetic wanting to know if he would still be able to 'slip his shoulder' (illegally) as a rugby hooker, as I had seen him do so often from my position just behind him in the second row. Judging by his bullet-smashed upper arm I thought it was unlikely, but could not bring myself to say so.

Our boys were followed into Ajax Bay by their opponents. The three officers and four Senior NCOs represented an unsual rank mix of the kind found in Argentine Special Forces. We prepared them for operations on their gunshot wounds, but remained wary, with their stretcher trestles placed together in one corner of the post-op area. For the first and only time during our tenure of Ajax Bay, we also posted an armed guard close by,

Another unlikely encounter then took place. Two SAS men had been flown in with gunshot wounds that were quite obviously more than 24 hours old. We knew better than to ask them about the circumstances of their injuries, and instead simply operated on them. The anaesthetist, Malcolm Jowitt, used Ketalar, an injectable and steroid-based general anaesthetic that had some occasional and highly interesting side effects. One of the SAS men, a big ex-Sapper, came round from his op and started singing bawdy rugby songs, quite tunefully, at the top of his voice!

The cabaret act was much appreciated, but when I wandered over to check that everything was going well, the other SAS soldier half rose off the stretcher, looked at me strangely - and then reached up and and grabbed my camouflage jacket. With his long hair and scruffy beard it was some seconds before I recognised him. What a strange place for a re-union! As a teenage Royal Marine trainee, Dick P was in No. 14 Recruit Troop when I had joined, over ten years before, to complete the Commando course at Lympstone. He had helped me greatly, especially on the day that I gave up, while trying to complete the Endurance Course pass-out test.

We were running back to camp, against the clock, as a syndicate of three. I'd decided that enough was enough, and that being a doctor in a Polaris submarine had suddenly become much more attractive than this wet and muddy existence with the Royal Marines. I could (and can) still shut my eyes and recall Dick P's upturned face, pleading with me: "Come on, sir! If you don't get to the line with us, we'll have to do this bastard again tomorrow.." followed by: "Doc! PLEASE don't let us down..."

Those simple words summoned a huge tidal wave of shame that washed over me, dissolved all the fatigue, and enabled me to beat my two companions to the line - in time. From him I had learned a very simple, but life-long lesson. When you think you are beaten, and have nothing more to offer, you've only just scratched the surface of what you are really capable of...

I had heard on the grapevine that he had subsequently left the Corps, possibly to join the French Foreign Legion, or become a mercenary. Now here we were, in the middle of nowhere, clutching each other's hands like long-lost brothers, which in a sense is exactly what we were. I explained this to a group of marines who were watching my strange behaviour; they understood instantly. The sufferings endured on Woodbury Common and on the Tarzan Course were severe enough to bind together forever any men who had shared this experience. What a fantastic privilege I had been granted this day, in that I was able to repay him for his devotion and concern some ten years earlier! Dick made a good recovery, and later on went back to complete his time at Hereford, after a stint as a weapons instructor.

The television and radio crews turned up, and asked if they could film and record us. I agreed, because I knew them. Mike Nicholson and Brian Hanrahan did brief interviews with me, the contents of which I could not even recall a few minutes afterwards. The BBC pool cameraman, a nice chap called Ken Hesketh, lingered for some time on a shot of Charles Batty in theatre, carving dead meat from the large bullet exit wound of an Argentine Special Forces officer's leg. It seemed possible that it might become an image to go around the world. I sincerely hoped so.

Then, before I could do a special piece to camera for Jeremy Hands, who unlike the other two had been with us in the Canberra, one of my senior NCOs suddenly asked to see me, in private. This was a request that I instantly agreed to. Sgt S then told me, in no uncertain terms, that he totally disagreed with my decision to let the media people into Ajax Bay!

This was his privilege of course; I listened to his reasoning, which was full of the usual bias and prejudice, then pointed out two things to him. The interviewers had received nothing but the truth from me, and I also wanted the word to get back to all the wives and mothers in UK that the medical teams at Ajax Bay were doing well. We had become an effective team, and were happy in our work, but just as anxious as anyone else to finish this war and return home. We were also very proud of our track record - everyone who had made it to Ajax Bay alive had also left alive. After 107 major operations, and even in defiance of the awful wounding power of modern munitions, that was no mean achievement.

My subordinate started to bluster again, but I exercised my powers inherent in the Naval Discipline Act, and told him to 'face aft and salute' - and get back to work. Most interestingly, the same NCO asked to see me privately again while we were on the way home. I told him he was already forgiven for what he thought he might have done! He grinned cheerfully, but still apologised for his attitude. His wife had apparently written to say how much my cheerful and optimistic words had meant to everyone back home, and how from her standpoint, if the Boss of Medical Squadron seemed to be on good form, then her husband was undoubtedly OK too!

When I got back to Jeremy Hands, I mentioned to him, almost as an afterthought, the bombs next door. The 37 hours for the time fuzes had been exceeded, and that we regarded them as part of the furniture now. Jeremy was rather nervous at first, but then reassured when I told him that I was happy to stand next to the UXB in the refrigeration machinery. Ken Hesketh was not so keen, and politely declined my invitation to film the beast. That was a pity, because it would have been one of the enduring images of the war to have J. Hands Esq. telling the world that he was standing in front of an unexploded Argentine bomb that had come to rest in the British field hospital!

Sadly, Jeremy Hands died before the new Millennium was in, but I often teased him at our reunions about his missed stellar opportunity. Ken Hesketh also died early, in ill-health - possibly because of an incident in the Iran/Iraq war when he filmed too close to a unexploded chemical warfare munition that was being dealt with. The other Jeremy, Major General Jeremy Moore, had no inhibitions about seeing the UXB. A wiry and tough man who was once my Unit CO, it was all we could do to restrain him from taking a piece of the thing as a souvenir. Some of our other VIP visitors also professed interest in an inspection, but had usually seen enough from the door of the compartment, fifteen yards away. Perhaps we were all becoming slightly 'bomb-happy'. For our part, we had almost forgotten about the two devices next door.

A remarkable Argentinian casualty arrived, the very last one from the Battle of Goose Green. Private Donato Baez had just been found, barely alive, in a water-logged trench some distance from the airfield. Like the other occupants of the trench, he had been left for dead. He had a penetrating wound of the right eye, and fractures of the right hand and left thigh as well as a rigid belly and a very low body temperature of 32 degrees C. Young Donato should not really have been alive.

Poor, dumb peasant soldier. All my marines and medics, now refreshed by some decent sleep, felt very sorry for him and proceeded to lavish fantastic care on the helpless Argentine conscript. He was surrounded with hot water bottles and foil blankets, given fresh blood, and received a warm Savlon wash for his filthy hands and feet - followed by the best surgeon in this sector of the South Atlantic for his wounds. His low temperature played havoc with the anaesthetic drugs, and Malcolm Jowitt had to ventilate him by hand for two hours after Bill's operations were successfully completed, until Donato's body warmed up and the muscle-relaxing agents could be successfully reversed.

Later on in the evening, during the daily brief to all hands, I mentioned the bombs again, plus the possibility (now passed) of their time-delayed detonation! Everyone looked a bit shocked, then highly relieved. Good fortune still flew in tandem with us. I felt sure that the Fuerza Aerea Argentina planning staff would have put a big red 'destrozado' mark through our map location, and that they would not want to waste further airstrike efforts on us.

But might we run out of ships and missiles before the enemy ran out of planes? It all promised, as the Duke of Wellington once remarked about a completely different battle, to be a rather close-run thing.